Thursday, January 14, 2010

This morning while I was getting dressed, Kareem Abdul Jabbar was on tv talking about coping with his illness, the Lakers and other stuff. About halfway through the interview, I was thinking to myself, hey, that's Kareem, and I interviewed him a month ago. Even now, it still feels like a surreal event.

Anyway, back in October I wrote this entry about someone I went to high school with, who I dislike a great deal. He had written an "article" that I thought was poorly written, and I took great delight in making fun of it. This was immature, vindictive, and it wasn't the shining example of me taking the high road the way Denny Green taught me to do but I did it anyway. Well yesterday, I stumbled upon a second article that was poorly written, and again, I am choosing to shun all traces of maturity.

The article is about one of my favorite bands, The Legendary Roots Crew, specifically about the "lead rapper" Black Thought. I attempted to read it, because I thought I may learn something, but instead I found myself annoyed at the comedy of errors. Allow me to break them down. And again, feel free to click here to see the article.

1)The first sentence is "Philly is home to lots of good music". That's like saying the Lakers have had lots of good players, or Michael Jordan has lots of money. Everyone knows that bullshit, the key is to frame it in a unique way, so that people know you'll be taking a different approach. But when you state the obvious in simplistic fashion, it makes the reader (me) think you're not very intelligent. Have some imagination man.

2) He lists one of The Roots' albums as "When Things Fall Apart", when in fact their cd is entitled "Things Fall Apart". That's an pretty big oversight on his part, considering The Roots specifically used that title to pay homage to Chinua Achebe's 1958 classic novel by the same name. There was no "When" anywhere in the title. That speaks to a lack of research done by the author.

3)He goes on to write the following sentence, "Most music fans instantly recognize the Drummer, ?uestLove because of his huge afro." The word "drummer" is randomly capitalized like its a state capital or the name of a cereal. As good of a drummer as Questlove is, there is no "D" attached to his profession, just a "d". And again, the author is attacked by a bad case of the "simples" by mentioning that Questlove has a huge afro..

4) He mentions in this article that The Roots are currently on a European tour. If by European tour, he means that they are in New York City every night performing on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, then yes, they are on a European tour. Again, a lack of research..and no mention of The Roots' gig with Jimmy Fallon is made ANYWHERE. How does that happen?

5)There are actually more than five errors, but I'm stopping after this because I'm annoyed. He mentions that the "new" Roots single is "Rising Up". The single came out in 2008, The Roots have a newer single called "How I Got Over" that came out in 2009, and the author's article is dated January 8, 2010. You do the math.

Now I'm sure someone smart out there will say, "Rashad, why are you tearing him down, why don't you help?" And after I told you to GFY, I'd tell you that I DID reach out to this guy after his first sham of an article. I told him there were errors and I offered to help him out by editing his work, but he shunned me. So I now I have free reign to rain on his error-filled parade.

Shoutout to my main man Teddy Pendergrass who passed away last night. I wish I could link a better video for this song, but this will have to do for now.